Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz: How Do Lipids and Cholesterol Regulate Trafficking Across the Secretory Pathway?

Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz explores the function of lipids in regulating the secretory pathway, the steps by which newly synthesized proteins are processed and shuttled from the endoplasmic reticulum to the Golgi to the plasma membrane. The composition of membrane lipids changes across these three main compartments. How is the lipid gradient generated, and does it play a role in protein trafficking and membrane organization?

Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz is Distinguished Investigator and Chief of the Section on Organelle Biology in the Cell Biology and Metabolism Branch at the National Institutes of Health. Lippincott-Schwartz helped pioneer the field of nano-scale resolution microscopy for the visualization of proteins inside living cells. She continues to use live-cell imaging to investigate the dynamics of membrane trafficking, sorting, and compartmentalization in the secretory pathway of eukaryotic cells. In recognition of her scientific contributions, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2008.

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iBioMagazine offers a collection of very short talks that highlight the human side of research. iBioMagazine goes “behind-the-scenes” of scientific discoveries, provides advice for young scientists, and explores how research is practiced in the life sciences.